LETTER TO EDITOR: Faust Music Site — Honor the Past, Retain Warm Allure

April 1, 2015

Faust Music Site — Honor the Past, Retain Warm Allure

The Faust Music store is now empty since its owner recently died. The prominent corner site, 2202-2206 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., is now in the sights of a developer that wants to plant a massive 72-unit apartment building there. It is a heavy looking, primarily black and gray straight-lined behemoth.

The effects of such high density are to enrich its owners and to permanently create aesthetic chaos across the landscape of S. Kinnickinnic and to forever depress the dreams that so many in Bay View desire for an attractive, cohesive, and photogenic business area. This important spot in Bay View will either fashion our modernity or foreshadow an everlasting heartbreak, especially as one looks south on KK from north of the site.

Developers are eyeing Bay View (as developers must keep looking for areas that are newly popular) for making a great deal of money through high-density development, copy-cat designs that inadequately consider the welfare and sensibilities of those who have lived there. There is nothing new about such profiteering that burdens the local populace.

It is right to look at the Faust Music site as an opportunity; a once and for all opportunity. It is a chance to create, through wise design, a cohesiveness that the north end of the KK business district needs. But to do so, an apartment or other building would incorporate natural or simulated natural materials, softer lines, and a warm appearance that references the natural warmth of the existing older buildings, which will remain indefinitely.

In this defining spot in Bay View, a new building can and will say what our character is. We are not like other parts of the city. We are not cold, square, dark. We are natural. We honor the past while retaining our quaint, warm allure.

The proposed design is cold and harsh and has nothing to do with character of Bay View. As seen elsewhere in Milwaukee, such buildings quickly lose sentiment when a better design shows up nearby.

It is time that we give serious consideration to color. Compatible but uplifting colors for the north end of the KK district should be earthy but somewhat brighter than that of the existing structures on the street.

All Bay View residents will lose if the proposed design prevails. And all Bay View residents should register their concerns with the Kinnickinnic BID board (Business Improvement District), at info@bayviewwi.com, or write to Kinnickinnic BID #44, 2685 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., Milwaukee, WI, 53207

Sincerely,
David Endres
S. Superior St.

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